Blooming Whites - How to Fix?

[KhalJimbo]

Hi All

I have calibrated my TV twice now using my Eye One LT. Once using the Movie setting and the colour tone Warm 1, with the second time using the Standard setting with the colour tone set to Normal.

I calibrated the screen so its Contrast measured 36ftl. Which seems to be the reccommended setting.

However I have this problem on both settings when the white seem to bleed out and cause a halo effect on the bright parts. Take for example the film UP, in the beginning when they are building the house the ladies wedding dress has this cloudy white effect coming off it. Same in iRobot, then Will Smith talks to the doctors hologram, he has this white halo around him. Even films that have lights in them (like the lab scenes in I Am Legend and the prison scene in Blood Diamond) there are these big blurs around the lights hanging from the ceilings.

I just cannot figure out where on earth I am going wrong.

I have looked at all my measure meants and tbh they all look fine to me, I have most of my DeltaE's measuring under 3 when I am my calibrated Standard setting. Only the really 10 - 30 IRE are have DeltaE's of about 6 and 90 - 100 IRE have DeltaE's of about 7. With everything in between having DeltaE's under 3 (closer to 2).

I have switched off all extra processing etc, turned sharpness right down etc and I still cant get rid of these blooming whites. Some films are worse than others.

Now, I have tried turning brightness, cell lights, contrast down and it doesnt help ring them in it just darkens the halo and doesnt remove it or stop the whites from bleeding.

What is there that I can be doing to stop this? Is there a paticular thing I am missing out?

Any help would be HUGELY appreciated.

 

[KelvinS1965]

What player are you using? It could be clipping the white in the player itself (not unheard). You may have to change a setting within the player to resolve this first. If you use a test disc such as the AVS HD709 one (free to download) then you should be able to check if the flashing bars above 235 are visible. You may need to try different modes in the player first to see if it's possible to pass the above 235 signal (you may need to turn down the TV's contrast first in order to confirm this).

FWIW Having delta Es at 90 and 100IRE of 7 isn't that good really. It might indicate that the contrast control is too high up or perhaps an issue to do with which mode you are using (not sure what TV this is). I've been able to get my 90 and 100 IRE delta Es under 2 on my 3 TVs, although they are Sony LCD models if it makes any difference. If it's a plasma screen you are calibrating you might need to use 'windowed' test patterns rather than full field ones, for reasons I can't fully recall (I think it's to do with power for full field white maybe).

 

[KhalJimbo]

What player are you using? It could be clipping the white in the player itself (not unheard). You may have to change a setting within the player to resolve this first. If you use a test disc such as the AVS HD709 one (free to download) then you should be able to check if the flashing bars above 235 are visible. You may need to try different modes in the player first to see if it's possible to pass the above 235 signal (you may need to turn down the TV's contrast first in order to confirm this).

FWIW Having delta Es at 90 and 100IRE of 7 isn't that good really. It might indicate that the contrast control is too high up or perhaps an issue to do with which mode you are using (not sure what TV this is). I've been able to get my 90 and 100 IRE delta Es under 2 on my 3 TVs, although they are Sony LCD models if it makes any difference. If it's a plasma screen you are calibrating you might need to use 'windowed' test patterns rather than full field ones, for reasons I can't fully recall (I think it's to do with power for full field white maybe).

Well I am using the curtpalme guide that is stickier at the top of this section using all the windowed patterns on the DVE disc. I'm going to do another Cali tonight using the Warm2 setting and movie mode as that is what the calibrated the C7000 with in it's review today (I have the model below which is the C680) then I'll post my results.

What is the 235 test anyway?

 

[KhalJimbo]

Here are the screen shots of the results I got after calibrating using Standard mode with the Normal Colour Tone. So whats the verdict?

 

[KhalJimbo]

Just looked through the settings on the BDP and the only thing I found I can change is turning HDMI Deep Colour on/off. I turned it off now, but should it really be on? Or is that something that should be off like dynamic contrast in the TV?

Sorry for all the questions BTW, but you dont ask you dont learn!

 

[KelvinS1965]

I'd turn the deepcolour off. There isn't any content to use it and it's probably just padding the 8 bit source anyway. Unless you're using a VideoEQ like mine in which case it's helpful to feed it with a higher bit depth as the output will then have finer graduations, but I digress. Your charts seem to show that you are 'running out' of red at the higher end (this is why your red drops low at 100 IRE in the greyscale and also why your gamma dips at 90 IRE I think. Is there a choice for RGB or YBrCr output in the menu somewhere as it might be worth trying whichever one you didn't use this time. Also if the RGB setting gives you a choice of RGB 16-235 setting or RGB 0-255 setting the former may well clip the whites.

I'd lower the main contrast a click or two and remeasure, so if you can get the delta E closer and lose the gamma dip at 90. IIRC having the contrast too high and the gamma dropping at the top can tend to make faces look a little 'plastic'.

The 235 flashing bars test pattern is in the AVS HD709 test disc. It is a free download that you burn onto a DVD but in AVCHD format. Many BluRay players can play AVCHD discs as if they were a BluRay, hence it's use for calibrating using a BluRay player as the source. I always use the 'Basic patterns' on this disc as a precursor to the full calibration: The first pattern has flashing black bars and helps to set the brightness control properly (the most important control IMHO).

AVS HD 709 - Blu-ray & MP4 Calibration - AVS Forum

Attached is a chart from a recent calibration I did on one of my TVs: I rented an i1Pro from the calibration power buy thread (Ricky) and used it mainly to calibrate my HD350 projector. I can't repost the HD350 calibration, but here's one of my old 40" TV to show what I mean; there is no control over the gamma it can only be lowered more, but you can see that it remains pretty flat and that the greyscale is good at 100 IRE. In fact it's at a delta E of 0.9 at 100IRE according to the table in Chromapure (not able to show this).

 

[KhalJimbo]

Well I dont have any blank DVDs so I'll try pick some up tomorrow and fiddle around again on wednesday (busy tomorrow night).

I've just done another run on the Movie Mode with the colour temp of Warm2 and these are the results I got. The gamma looks stuffed but not sure what I can do to fix that. These results look better to me.

 

[KelvinS1965]

If there aren't any gamma controls, there might not be a lot you can do about it other than try different contrast settings and maybe brightness to see if there is a compromise setting that helps. I'm not familiar with this TV or plasmas in general, but are there any RGB controls accessable within the user menu or are you just limited to chosing from preset colour temps? I think the reason the gamma dips off is that the contrast might be too high for that mode. It looks like the TV is running out of brightness at the higher end, but it's a gentle tail off rather than a 90 IRE and above dip.

Did this later setup resolve the strange halo effects you were complaining of or not?

As a point of interest my TV was reading a 'Y' of 82 compared to your 124 at 100 IRE. Being an LCD I would have expected it to be brighter than a plasma, so this makes me wonder if you're just trying to run it too bright?

 

[KhalJimbo]

I do have a gamma control but have left it at zero for now, when should I change that and remeasure? I have separate RGB controls in the white balance section of the menu for RGB offset and gain. These measurements above are after playing with those. The greyscale I took on the default were all quite off with DeltaEs of about 9 all round.

It has resolved the halo effect somewhat it's now almost non existent. I can however still see it if I really look for it on the brighter scenes. I put in The Informant and the scenes of Matt Famon in the office the windows were still blurry but I could see blinds now, where as before it was just a white blur.

I think I might run it again tomorrow but turn the contrast down about I left it on the default setting which was 95 as that was reading an ftl of 36 which is apparently the recommended setting.

What I'll try do tomorrow is turn the back light up a bit and the contrast down and try calibrate it again with more headroom in the contrast range and see if I can sort it out like that.

 

[KelvinS1965]

I just skimmed the C7000 review and they got really good results out of the box. Not sure how yours differs but the only thing they did mention was the contrast had to be adjusted using some particular test pattern that I've not used myself. It might be worth asking what the contrast setting they used was just to give you an idea of where to start from. FWIW I found that I had to use 90-91 (out of 100) on my TVs otherwise I'd run out of one colour and the deltaE would be too large and/or the higher IRE gamma would drop even more.

I know there is often a recommendation to use contrast as an fL control, but IMHO I think it should be used to select the maximum contrast without clipping and/or discolouration, otherwise you're just throwing away contrast (or trying to get an output the TV isn't capable of as I think might be what's happening here). You mention a backlight which confussed me though as I thought this was a Plasma?

I did see an interesting thread over on AVS regarding how small changes in contrast effected the greyscale lower down (although it's an LCD it still might be of interest):

Impact of Small Changes in Contrast on Grayscale Tracking - AVS Forum

 

[KhalJimbo]

Thanks for all the help so far.

I mentioned backlight, it's actually called cell light which is the overall brightness of the image. I'm thinking as you suggested to use less contrast as it's running out of red from 90 - 100IRE.

So when I get home tonight I'll do another measure that has more back light to get the ftl to the desired level with my contrast around 90 so I still have plenty of headroom.

I'm getting closer now